Think Software Booklet 2016 | Issue 2 Volume 1

ISSUE

02 VOL 1

March 2016

rethinking it budgets

Primed for Growth - Ministry of Infrastructure Development All Geared to Defend - Rotana Gartner on board with Think SS for winning IT strategies Innovations Group's Ashish Nanda on the company's journey to success

Value Drive Published by

Think SS PARTNERS

THINK SS Key contacts

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Deepak Verma Managing Director Tel: +971 (0)4 4288388 Email: deepak@thinkss.com

Ashu Verma Director – Accounts Tel: +971 (0)4 4288376 Email: ashu@thinkss.com

Gautam Chakrabarty Head of Sales Tel: +971 (0)4 4288330 Email: gautam@thinkss.com

Faheem Siddiqui Head of Services Tel: +971 (0)4 4288327 Email: faheem@thinkss.com

Rahul MAthur Partner - Governance Risk & Compliance Tel: +971 (0)4 428831 Email: rahul@thinkss.com

Mohit Sharma Product Manager Tel: +971 (0)4 4288324 Email: mohit@thinkss.com

Kavitha Advani Marketing Manager Tel: +971 (0)4 4288345 Email: kavita@thinkss.com

Sudip Chatterjee Finance & Operation Manager Tel: +971 (0)4 4288305 Email: sudip@thinkss.com

Issue 02 A special supplement of Think Software Services

INTRODUCTION

Deepak Verma, Managing Director

thinking outside the box

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nce again, ladies and gentlemen, it gives me great pleasure to contribute to Think Software Service’s second ‘Think’ booklet, and its first of 2016.

This booklet was designed with one aim in mind – to give the Middle East’s IT end-users a sense of who we are, and to give an impression of the work we’re doing in the market.

Think SS was established in 2004, initially offering security solutions to the demanding customers of the UAE.

By 2007, we added networking and infrastructure services to our portfolio, and we’ve gone from strength to strength ever since.

Over time, our specialism has evolved, and we now also find ourselves primed to provide first-class offerings in the disaster recovery market, an area that a huge number of organizations – both in the public and private sector – are seeking to invest in.

While IT budgets can vary from organization to organization, we can tailor solutions individually to meet clients’ needs.

We appreciate the challenges that end-users face, from meeting ISO 27001 certification standards, to upholding regional data governance regulations, and how these concerns need to be alleviated with reassuring solutions.

Our comprehensive network of partners puts us in a formidable position to serve customers in this region who demand the very best from their IT solutions, whether on-premise or in the cloud.

I have absolutely no doubt that some of the most innovative and forward-thinking organizations in the world are sat right on our doorstep here in Dubai, and Think SS is determined to play an important in this transition to futuristic IT architectures.

I hope you enjoy reading about our success stories and partnerships in this booklet, and really get a sense of we serve the most important aspect of the IT ecosystem in this region – its end-users.

Issue 02 A special supplement of Think Software Services

highlights

2015 highlights Delhi & Cochin Business implements new structure

Global delivery centre in India established

Application deployment team with SharePoint specialist

Solutions team establishes ‘Revitel’ software

Think Consulting Governance Risk and Compliance

Awarded Dell Software – User Group Conference 2015 – Excellence Award “Network Security – Enterprise”

McAfee – Commercial Security Partner - 2015

Barracuda – EMEA Conference 2015 – “Storage Specialty of the Year”

Dubai Land Department Award – Excellent Customer Service Award

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VAR – The Integrator ICT Champion Awards 2015 Emerging Integrator of the Year 2015

Reseller Hot 50 Awards – Best Converged IT Provider

SME 100 Awards – SME 69 Award Winner

testimonial

Creating happy customers Thinks SS continues to get high praise from the customers

Qaiwan Group

Spinneys Abu Dhabi

Mustafa Ahmed IT Manager

T K G NAIR I T Manager

"In today's market business is tough enough with the added worry of IT related issues. Think Software Services gave us a complete peace of mind with a complete end to end Annual Maintenance Contract (AMC) round-theclock IT support, complete responsibility for our hardware and software systems and ongoing security consulting to keep our critical business data safe and leaving us to concentrate on what we do best. While we are out and shaking hands and winning new contracts, Think Software in the background helped us to make sure everything works and our IT are up-to-date with the latest trends."

"Spinneys, Abu Dhabi implemented Office 365 to get a jump up on work efficiency. Think SS team made working together easier and more impactful by building a suite of integrated apps and services that removed barriers and empowered teams to do and achieve more in our organization through implementing Office 365. By adopting Office 365, the company gained mobile access to email and calendars, shared workspaces, and stored documents. It's now more efficient and more responsive."

CWT-SML Logistics LLC

Edi

Rajesh Kotekar Assistant Manager – ICT

Yousif Odeh IT Manager

"Think Software Services assessed our whole IT system and suggested ways that improved and streamlined what we already had. They did the complete IT health check and refined us on how our setup has been out of date and the technology has moved on and made us understand how small changes can often improve things dramatically. Think SS is surely a guaranteed company with an honest services and solutions that could make a huge and immediate improvement on productivity of any company."

"We EDI IT Team are very happy to deal with Think SS Company because of their professional and matured team, services and their fast and appreciated support. We are happy to keep this relationship and looking forward to more cooperation between us."

Zone Parking Rashid Al Saadi IT Senior Manager

Arun Junutalat IT Director (Head of Department)

"In the age of cyberspace, security is the organization's top concern. Think SS with its professional team has implemented the latest security solution in our organization from McAfee, the leading anti-virus in the market. The project was implemented at the highest standards as planned and ahead of the expected timelines."

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insight Consulting

Think risk, think F opportunities

As industries continue to evolve at the age of digital transformation, businesses are faced with numerous risks surrounding different markets.

During an engaging discussion, Rahul Mathur, Partner, Governance Risk and Compliance; and Faheem Siddiqui, Head of Technology Services, delve into the opportunities brought by employing a sound governance and risk strategy. The duo also shed light on the role that Think Software Services (Think SS) can play in enabling organizations achieve the right mix of IT and business capabilities for GRC.

Faheem Siddiqui, Head of Technology Services and Rahul Mathur, Partner, Governance Risk and Compliance

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S: What is GRC and what are GRC technologies?

RM: Simply put, GRC is what is known as Governance Risk and Compliance framework. It is an integrated outline of how well an organization manages its unique set of risks by using best practices and processes. Consequently, GRC technologies are the tools that support the simplification, automation, and integration of enterprise, operational, and IT risk management processes and data.

FS: What’s the importance of GRC and how can it be of advantage for businesses?

RM: Risk is changing so dramatically that you can no longer look to the past to determine next steps. From cyber risks to regulations, industries are facing higher velocity and broader nature of challenges. Market competition is also made even more complex by hacking attempts and aggressive government intervention.

Manual processes make it difficult to get information to stakeholders quickly. There remain version control issues and inconsistent methods of measurement, resulting to scattered information that causes obstacles to remediating risk.

With GRC, you can proactively link risk management to business success, therefore, making risk becomes a new source of competitive advantage.

According to Gartner’s 2015 CIO survey, 89 percent of CIOs reported that the ‘digital world’ is creating new types of risk, however, 69 percent reported that investments in risk management are just not growing at the same pace. Companies will need to invest in new and innovative governance, risk and compliance (GRC) technologies, while effectively maintaining their current GRC application portfolios. Furthermore, silos existing in any organization on risk, compliance and audit create duplicate risks highlighted and does not create a ho-

listic or integrated view for key management decisions.

FS: What role will GRC play in today’s market conditions?

RM: While the current market conditions of low oil prices demand result to decrease in budget allocations, the emphasis on risk is now greater than ever. No one thinks about risk management the same way they did five years ago and that is with good reason. The way companies approach and address risk is significantly different today.

The next five years can be expected to bring equal, if not greater, shifts in the way GRC programs need to operate to succeed. Not only are regulations like NESA (for public companies) changing, the technology used to power businesses is also evolving and everything is becoming more connected.

What used to be small local threats can now have a huge global impact.

Many people say, there are only two types of organizations today – the ones that are hacked and ones that are not. Business leaders need themselves where you are currently and how do you plan to protect yourself. This will answer your basic questions of managing cyber risk.

What we see in the market today is that while organizations have made their core offerings on operations side as advanced as possible however, the back office and share functions have lagged and they are still trying to catch up. The finance, risk, compliance functions are still in their nascent stages and are still catching up, so it is clear that there is a gap in this space.

RM: How can this gap be filled and what is Think SS doing about it?

FS: Most companies today are just embarking on their GRC journeys.

They are typically following a path from spreadsheets and office automation to developing a home-grown software solution to address their immediate needs. These needs are com-

monly driven by a single compliance mandate on a specific area. However, as the need to address multiple compliance mandates across multiple business units becomes more pressing, companies will turn to an outside support to provide capabilities and content to meet this new challenge.

Instead of becoming cynical or dismissive about the current state of their GRC programs, effective businesses view the confluence of business, technology, legal, and regulatory developments as an opportunity to address the gaps and weaknesses in their programs.

that our capabilities will complement my specialities on the technology front and together we will provide our management with an integrated or holistic view of where we stand on compliance or risk. With today’s technology supporting us, we should be able to guide our customers to where the world is moving towards and enable them with an Integrated view of GRC.

The next five years can be expected to bring equal, if not greater, shifts in the way GRC programs need to operate to succeed.

RM: What will be our go-to-market strategies?

FS: Think SS is a key player in the market for last 10 years providing network, infrastructure and security solutions to its 200 customers. We will be embarking and focusing on providing a onestop solution to our customers though a brand called, ‘Think Consulting’, a division of Think Software Services.

As you have a vast understanding of GRC from a business perspective, I have a wide knowledge of GRC from an IT perspective. This gives both a digital as well as business context to any consulting solution we will offer.

We will provide consultancy, training and implementation of technology solutions on governance risk and compliance and IT security. We’ll be offering our services and products across all verticals and organizations across multiple market sectors

That’s the gap that Think SS aims to fill in. Organizations that do not have situational awareness and predictive analytics capabilities are less prepared to detect and mitigate the more sophisticated threats in their information supply chain.

Through its core capabilities and investment in people with business context, Think SS will assist the market in bridging the gap and transit, consult and advice its customers from mere excel sheets framework to risk based integrated view of their GRC framework.

The both of us come from a GRC background in businesses. I am sure

RM: Are there any challenges you think we will face in the market?

FS: As with every business, challenges are unavoidable. There are a number of bottlenecks that we may face such as costs, OPEX vs CAPEX, data privacy issues, good to have vs need to have, but these are not issues that we cannot overcome.

Awareness and education is the key to answer all of the above challenges. We will follow a lateral thinking approach and break it down to pain points before we even start advising any customer. This is a long cycle of cultural shift but it is a change with times hence longer.

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feature Disaster Recovery

Public promise

Think SS' managing director Deepak Verma and accounts director Ashu Verma give their take on why public sector clients have a great opportunity to revamp their disaster recovery offerings.

Deepak Verma, Managing Director, Think SS

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hink SS has come a long way since 2004. Back then, the firm only offered IT security services, but branched out as it began to grow. By 2007, it had launched its networking and infrastructure services, fields in which the

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company would go on to excel. However, the company maintains a holistic view of all three components to this day. “We focus on the network, infrastructure and security all together,” Managing Director Deepak Verma says. “IT has now established itself as an integral part of the sup-

ply chain for a business and is no longer a mere support function. Most IT security incidents, whether they impact end-user computing, servers or internetworking environment, have an adverse impact on businesses continuity itself.”

More recently, the firm is making a drive to ramp up its disaster recovery (DR) business. This is an area that Verma feels has huge potential. “A lot of organizations are unprepared in terms of their DR offerings,” Verma says. “The ‘rack and stack’ approach is becoming a thing of the past; things are now becoming more application-focused towards cloud.”

Offering DR services in co-location, on-premise or pure cloud or hybrid models, Think SS offers project management and solution design for successful DR implementation, and considers a number of variables when tailoring solutions for its clients. “We offer a broad spectrum of partnerships in disaster recovery, and this depends on a range of factors, including the customer’s applications, user base and geographical footprint,” Verma says.

With disaster recovery forming an important part of meeting modern standards, organizations are being increasingly pressed to update their offerings. The ISO 27001 certification, and clause T9.2 of the UAE Government’s formulated information assurance standard – set by the National Electronic Security Authority – are spurring public sector entities to look for new options. “Nowadays, everyone demands that they have all the latest certifications,” Verma says. “Our solutions can fulfill these requirements.”

Verma believes that Think SS’s solutions directly translate into business value, and that the firm’s range of partners make it the ideal stop for effective DR. “Our DR expertise lies in transforming investments into something that’s usable for IT transformation purposes, while maintaining the prime function of ready backup for IT services continuity,” Verma says. “Our combined expertise and OEM relationships in designing DR solutions across the triad of on-premise, co-

located or cloud services gives us an edge over bidding for highly competitive solutions, extending unmatched price points to our customers without compromising the robustness or dependability of the DR infrastructure.”

Over the last five years has immersed itself with public sector clients, but Verma is not content with the progress the company has made so far, spying opportunities for vast growth.

“The public sector comprises the largest spenders in the Middle East, and they generally lead technology innovation,” Verma says. “Government organizations generally follow a similar pattern in their adoption habits, and a lot of them are still utilising legacy platforms. That being said, they are highly willing to adopt new technology to ensure they move forward.” Verma is also acutely aware of the resources that public sector organizations have at their disposal. “The typical government SME has a budget of around 10-14 million dirhams,” he says, “and unless they can make exceptions for mega projects, the average budget for a disaster recovery initiative is around the 4 million AED mark.”

Against a backdrop in which various disruptive technologies are changing business operations, Verma believes that public sector clients are often in need of a helping hand in making smart technology decisions. “There’s an eruption of

Our combined expertise and OEM relationships in designing DR solutions across the triad of onpremise, co-located or cloud services gives us an edge.”

Ashu Verma, Director, Accounts

new technology at the moment,” he says.

“Cloud, modern data centers and outsourcing are all huge challenges that clients face.” Although he is keen to stress that Think SS provides on-premise and cloud solutions, Verma believes that the latter should be exploited where possible.

“I am an advocate of doing what you can in the cloud,” he says. “On-premise solutions are absolutely fine in the short-term but cloud is the future.”

Verma is especially conscious of the demands that modern public sector enterprises in the region face, with the need to drive down CAPEX. With the technology market shifting towards servicesbased models, Verma believes that now is the time for enterprises to make investments in solutions that can cut costs.

“Services models are making in-roads,” he says. “Customers would rather have OPEX-based models, but at the same time they face obstacles in the form of being able to effectively test new technologies, and complying with regional

regulations that dictate where data must be stored.”

Think SS has spent years developing its strategy in getting the best for its clients, and Verma is an advocate of a “land and expand” policy of engagement. The firm is keen to understand its clients’ needs before making any important decisions. “It’s important that we can get to know our clients first before we discuss other areas,” Verma says. “We conduct Gap analyses to identify where exactly our customers can improve. It’s important to establish the types of vendors they want to partner with so we can get the best for them.”

Looking forward, Verma is also keen to promote Think SS’s ‘Revitel’ software renewal product, which is in its nascent stages in the market. “When you need new IT products, a lot of your software needs to be renewed,” he says. “If this is the case for 60% percent of your software, you need something that assists with these updates.”

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Partner Dell

Blueprint for growth Vangelis Lagousakos, Dell Sales Director for Gulf Region, discusses the vendor's game plan for the enterprises and its partnership with Think SS.

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ow is your new role and what are your plans for 2016?

I am the Sales Director for a very exciting region – the Gulf (excluding KSA). My focus is to integrate the sales teams across countries and regions that were managed separately by creating an optimal go-to-market strategy and a strong coverage model. This will enable sustainable growth and best-in-class customer experience as well. This consolidated and integrated model will also benefit the channel where we want to enable and collaborate with our partners towards a long-term and deeper strategic engagement.

Vangelis Lagousakos, Dell Sales Director Gulf Region

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With your new role, what are the changes, strategies you planning to do with Think SS? Clarity on our go-to-market strategy and sales engagement model will have a ripple effect on our partners. In addition, we are improving channel processes that enable business growth and efficient success for our partners.

Partners who understand the direction we are heading are aligning towards our goals; we are using combined business intelligence to capture new opportunities and enter new segments in the market. With our partners we are ensuring in everything we are doing we are providing the best in class partner experience that will hopefully reflect in the results.

What kind of opportunities do you see in this market with regard to enterprise solutions?

I think the best times are ahead.

Technology is a crucial pillar in the plans of most businesses in our region – public and private, large and small. Far-sighted business and public leaders recognize the need to partner with vendors who can provide end-to-end technology hardware and software solutions and partner for the long-term – this is where we succeed and are best positioned. With our strong portfolio I aim to help channel partners build long-term opportunities and capabilities with customers in their focused markets as well as their explorative markets; each of these needs a unique approach and strategy – we will work closer with the channel to ensure success.

Dell has embarked on a futureready enterprise strategy. What role would your partners such as Think SS play in this?

At Dell we believe that enterprise technology – regardless of the purpose of the solution or the vendor that sold it to you – should not just allow for change, but encourage it. This is Future Ready. Every bit of hardware, software or service you invest in should move an organization measurably closer to its goals. Partners play a crucial role in aligning these principles to customer aspirations.

Can you discuss the partner opportunities with Dell around the new technologies, and how does it benefit the end users?

Amongst the big-tech vendors in the industry today, Dell is the only vendor that provides its partners an end-to-end ecosystem of hardware and software solutions as well as local capabilities

and resources to most efficiently align technology solutions to business opportunities and challenges.This unique Dell advantage allows partners to take advantage of Dell Blueprints, fully integrated, differentiated, end-to-end architectures that combine hardware, software and services into easily deployable solutions. These are based on common

At Dell we believe that enterprise technology – regardless of the purpose of the solution or the vendor that sold it to you – should not just allow for change, but encourage it. This is Future Ready. Every bit of hardware, software or service you invest in should move an organization measurably closer to its goals. Partners play a crucial role in aligning these principles to Customer aspirations. use cases, they are tested and validated to ensure fast, reliable and predictable deployment of critical workloads.

What sort of enhancements to partner program are you planning to make this year, and how will this lead to best possible customer outcomes?

Our focus on channel engagement is as end-to-end as our unique technology capability in the industry. We focus heavily on enabling our channel through training – these are through conventional online content and material (available on www.partnerdirect. dell.com), as well as regular bespoke engagements on site. We also support our channel on the field directly with customers; while this is crucial to successful sales-engagement, we are also mindful of the opportunity for joint learning. Dell is always watchful to ensure collateral, content, and material proliferates and flows to the channel and these are also conveniently available on our partnerdirect.dell. com portal. Towards enabling channel partners to pursue unique aspirations that are afforded with our unique end-to-end capability, we also have programs and training engagements that focus on specific technology and trend verticals. Dell’s Solution Center (http://dell.to/1UNJHSm) uniquely offers partners access to on-site resources and experts who can assist customers with proof-of-concept testing prior to deployments in order to ensure that the solutions work in the customer’s environment.

What is the final goal and results with your partnership with Think SS and Dell?

To look back at the end of 2016 and feel incredibly proud of what we both – ThinkSS and Dell – have accomplished and achieved together for our Customers as well as our business.

This may sound simple, but requires a strong fluid business plan which we are constantly engaged in.

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partnership Gartner

winning strategies Having entered into an advisory partnership with renowned research firm Gartner, Think SS is on the verge of gaining unique insight into the pain points of would-be customers.

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hink SS has taken a major step in its journey to understanding its customers in the region, having recently entered into a partnership with internationally-renowned technology research firm Gartner. A new venture, the companies have embarked on the agreement in the past two months, and managing director Deepak Verma is extremely enthused by the promise of the

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relationship. “It’s extremely important for us to show that we’re making every effort to add value to our brand,” Verma says. “Partnering with Gartner forms an important step in that process. Our alignment with an advisory firm of their stature proves that we’re committed to increasing our reach within the market. It’s absolutely essential that customers have as much information as possible about our products and services.”

As part of the agreement, Think SS has entered into a structured engagement plan with Gartner, granting Think SS access to research content and relevant analysts. Gartner has 1,100 analysts worldwide, but Verma is especially keen to tap into the firm’s local expertise to maximise the relationship. “It’s important that we cater for the UAE market, so we need the benefit of analysts who have in-depth knowledge of the local market

dynamics and continuously interact with the end-users here, and that is a big selling point for us.”

Aside from merely providing improved insight into market demands, Verma also sees the partnership as being a dynamic ingredient in improving Think SS. “We’re very excited to avail this partnership so we can improve our own customer service levels, and meet their demands,” he says. “A lot of our clients use Gartner, so we know they’re a pillar in the technology industry. They understand the pain points of end-users, which will help us improve their levels of satisfaction.”

With a client base of over 500 Middle Eastern end-user organizations, operating in verticals ranging from oil and gas and banking, to healthcare and manufacturing, the firm’s primary aim is to

Our alignment with an advisory firm of Gartner’s stature proves that we’re committed to increasing our reach within the market.”

provide qualitative and quantitative advice to IT end-users. A part of Gartner analysts’ job is to help end-users in the vendor selection process.

Gartner has had a presence in the Middle East for over 15 years, and provides qualitative market analysis to clients through its well-known ‘Magic Quadrant’ research methodology. The Magic Quadrant is a graphical positioning of four types of technology providers, in markets where growth is high and provider differentiation is distinct. Comprising ‘challengers’, ‘leaders’, ‘niche players’ and ‘visionaries’, end-users have the ability to make informed decisions in terms of getting the right kind of service from a technology vendor.

This information is all designed to help with the request for proposal process, where Gartner provides toolkits and education for end-users. The firm’s work is mutually beneficial, however.

Gartner advises technology providers on their go-to-market strategy, and the best ways to engage with partners. In this vein, the firm’s partnership with Think SS has the potential to increase revenue with the use of the correct resources and written research.

“We understand that we have to keep briefing Gartner about our work in the market,” Verma says. “We know that they make recommendations to end-users based on what they know, so our consistent feedback to them has the potential to put us in a very strong position in the near future.”

In terms of Think SS’s own product offerings, Verma is especially keen for Gartner to help put Think SS’s ‘Revital’ software solution on the map in the region. “When CIOs purchase new hardware or software, renewals and warranties take on great importance for them,” he says. “It’s becoming increasingly difficult to control IT repositories, so we have real faith that Revital can solve these issues. Gartner have been very keen to work with us and give their guidance on how we can make Revital a true success.”

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Case Study

Ministry of Infrastructure Development

Primed for growth The Ministry of Infrastructure Development revamps its data center and network infrastructure to support the UAE's shift towards smart governance

Hessa Al Suwaidi, IT Director

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We had the support of higher management, especially HE Dr. Abdulla Alnuaimi, the Minister of MOID in achieving our goal of 100 percent SMart governance.�

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he Ministry of Public Works (MOID) plays a crucial rule in the urban development of the UAE by executing federal infrastructure projects including government housing, and buildings for various sectors such as healthcare, education, judiciary in addition to road networks linking the emirates to one another.

The Ministry’s stated mission is to achieve sustainable development in planning, establishing and maintaining infrastructure projects and organise the national housing sector through outstanding organizational performance according to world’s highest standards.

When HH Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of UAE, launched the Dubai Smart City program, which envisioned transforming government services into smart services, urban planning was one of the key pillars of the strategy. The mandate from the country’s leadership was very clear for MOID’s IT organization but it faced a challenge – it was glued to an inflexible IT infrastructure, which wasn’t able to keep up with the new applications and services demands. Its limitations

Al Suwaidi receives CIO 100 2016 Award

Now our data center environment is 90 percent virtualized which helped us to gain efficiencies and capabilities that were not possible with physical-only world. ” made it difficult to roll out critical applications and services to meet business needs, leading to poor operational visibility and control.

“Our data center infrastructure was in silos and network in segments. We had no high redundancy and highavailability clustering. Our database and applications were hosted on the same server, which posed issues related to security, scalability and performance. We were looking to transform our data center into a strategic business asset and move to smart services in line with the country’s vision,” says Hessa Al Suwaidi, IT Director. And that’s when Think Software Services (Think SS) came in.

After a detailed evaluation of MOID’s IT infrastructure, Think SS along with Dell came up with a roadmap to provide them with a more stable, reliable and highly available data center than can cater to future growth.

Shamsa Abdulla Hussain Ibrahim, Senior Network and Security Engineer

The first step was to consolidate servers to the minimum possible number of machines with the extensive use of virtualisation to decrease complexity and improve utilisation. “Now our data center environment is 90 percent virtualised, which helped us gain efficiencies and capabilities that were not possible with physical-only world. We have not only been to able to reduce the data center footprint but also reduce power and cooling requirements,” says Shamsa Abdulla Hussain Ibrahim, Senior Network and Security Engineer.

In addition to increased uptime and business times, consolidating servers down to a few physical machines through virtualisation also helped MOID to build a disaster recovery solution and extend the life of older applications.

When an organization embarks on virtualisation, the data center’s bandwidth requirements also go up. Though virtualisation has an immediate impact

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Case Study

Ministry of Infrastructure Development

in terms of overall efficiency, it requires an extensive upgrade to the underlying network infrastructure to work well.

MOID’s IT team understood this well, and overhauled its network to address bandwidth bottlenecks. Keeping in mind that growing business will require more bandwidth and stable network to account for increased traffics, MOID redesigned its network infrastructure by upgrading its switches to avoid single point of failure nodes and achieve high availability.

MOID has also implemented a network monitoring tool from SolarWinds to analyse traffic and bandwidth usage.

This gives the IT team better visibility inside their network infrastructure and components as well as centralised management in addition to an alerting system if any of the nodes malfunctions.

Another issue that MOID’s IT team had to tackle was storage, which was in

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multiple pools. “Our data volumes were growing in size and storage utilisation was rather high. Because of the fact that we are involved in construction, we have to deal with data-intensive files such as GIS drawings which significantly increase storage requirements,” says Hessa.

After analysing the Ministry’s data usage patterns and requirements, Think SS proposed implementing a new SAN storage to support future growth. Today, MOID uses Dell’s EqualLogic SAN, which provides a shared pool of virtual storage that can adjust dynamically according to application needs.

“Now we don’t worry about storage limitations anymore. This gives us a platform to move to business intelligence and analytics in the near future as well,” adds Hessa.

Thanks to a brand-new network and highly virtualized data center, now the

Ministry is all geared up to move to the next phase of IT transformation, which will enable it to cater to the speeds and needs of the business. “As a result of this project, we have also been able to bring our e-services back in-house, which was earlier hosted at a third-party data center. Now, all the 23 services are available for our constituents through our website and they can pay for it via eDirhams or credit card. We had the support of higher management, especially HE Dr. Abdulla Alnuaimi, the Minister of MOID in achieving our goal of 100 percent smart governance,” says Hessa.

MOID’s data center and network upgrade project, which won CNME’s CIO 100 award earlier this year, is a perfect example of how to harness the power of technology to improve customer service, enhance collaboration among employees and keep costs in line.

sales@thinkss.com www.thinkss.com

WHY THINKSS?

Think software services has a market-leading technology, capable of managing thousands of corporate customer contracts and licenses in a single repository.

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A PASSION FOR PERFECTION

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We help the customer to have a complete renewal visibility & control and Increase efficiency and productivity

We offer end-to-end capabilities, from the initial notification through out to completion of the transaction and expiration notification along with a streamlined renewal process.

We provide timely support to clients to ensure no gap in license compliance as well as provide 30-60 days advance notification and renewal quotations Designed by Amrita Chakravorty.

New Partner Akamai

Partnering to succeed

As the global leader in Content Delivery Network (CDN) services, Akamai makes the Internet fast, reliable and secure for its customers. The company’s advanced web performance, mobile performance, cloud security and media delivery solutions are revolutionizing how businesses optimize consumer, enterprise and entertainment experiences for any device, anywhere. The company, which recently opened its Dubai office, has partnered with Think SS. Robert Wickberg-Taylar, Sales Manager for the Middle East, discusses the details of the alliance.

W Robert Wickberg-Taylar, Sales Manager Middle East

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hy Think SS? Think SS supports organizations of all sizes with products, solutions and services within internet environments. With the established market position of the consulting and implementation services Think SS is an excellent Partner to provide regional businesses operating across all verticals with Akamai security and web acceleration solutions.

Our partnership was signed in February this year.

Following the recent establishment of your regional presence, how important was it for you to partner with firms like Think SS? Think SS bring specialist expertise and experience from working with customers in some specific industries in the Middle East. Our strategy is to work with partners like Think SS to scale our business in the region.

and business applications load quickly, and reliably. As well as providing highly effective security solutions to defend our customers from malicious web attacks like DDoS. The combination of creating a secure online environment and accelerating web content is core to Akamai’s Protect and Perform statement.

Is Think SS going to distribute the

What was agreed in the partnership?

Think SS joins the Akamai’s NetAlliance Partner Program and as such will gain access to the wide portfolio of online services and day to day best in class sales and engineering support.

What does this partnership mean for your customers?

The partnership will further support Akamai presence in the region and open additional channel of access to customers interested in consulting and implementing services for data security.

How will this partnership effect your overall company strategy?

Working with companies like Think SS is already very much part of the company strategy to work with ‘best in class’ partners to grow our business and ensure our joint customers gain from being able to purchase Akamai services via their preferred suppliers.

What are your plans for the region?

We want to maintain market leading position in the CDN market and help our customers to focus on their core businesses by outsourcing web delivery and cloud security to Akamai. That means helping media customers to stream video at the best quality to TV scale audiences, ensuring commerce and enterprise customer’s web content

The Middle East is a diverse region, but generally there is advanced infrastructure in the U.A.E. Qatar and other business hubs that creates a large amount of internet and mobile traffic that needs to be delivered to endusers securely and at speed. whole Akamai solutions portfolio?

Within Akamai portfolio Think SS will be distributing complete Multilayered defense to protect websites against the increasing threat, sophistication and scale of attacks, and also

DDoS defense for protecting all data center infrastructures against large, complex attacks, Application-layer defense to protect against data theft through attacks like SQL injections and cross-site scripting, network and situational optimizations applied intelligently based on device, network and browser.

Do you think this partnership will help Akamai meet its regional objectives?

Think SS with its specialized security team will help to reply to the dynamics of the market and fulfill the demand for improving security posture of companies within the region.

How strategic is the Middle East region for Akamai?

The Middle East is a diverse region, but generally there is advanced infrastructure in the U.A.E. Qatar and other business hubs that creates a large amount of internet and mobile traffic that needs to be delivered to end-users securely and at speed. This generates extensive opportunities for Akamai’s solutions. Akamai is investing in a local office staffed by experienced technical and commercial teams based on the potential we see in the region.

Can you please tell us the support you will be providing to Think SS to help them in their mission?

Akamai provides comprehensive partner support on the sales, marketing and enablement side. With specialized team of Account Executives and Solution Engineers dedicated to specific industries, Akamai will help to fulfill the specific demand of each particular customer for a full featured online security service and web performance.

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Case study Rotana Hotels

All geared to defend

Rotana Hotels has implemented a centralized security management to proactively protect endpoints and achieve an accurate security posture awareness

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eadquartered in Abu Dhabi, Rotana Hotel Management Corporation currently manages a portfolio of over 100 properties throughout the Middle East, Africa, South Asia and Eastern Europe with an aggressive expansion plan in place. Rotana is one of the early adopters of hybrid cloud systems in the regional hospitality sector, and delivers hotel business applications as a service from its data

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center, significantly reducing total cost of ownership.

Last year, Rotana centralized all its critical applications including the property management system in its corporate data center, which required the IT organization to re-think its security infrastructure. “Centalizing applications and IT services meant that we needed a scalable and secure IT environment.

We take information security very seriously and invest almost 20 percent of

our total IT budget into security systems. We have recently moved to nextgeneration firewalls but our security infrastructure revamp started with the implementation of a centralised antvirus management system,” says Biju Dharmarajan, Director of IT Security and Infrastructure at Rotana.

Rotana’s network supports around 6000 IT users and same number of endpoints, in addition to 100 odd servers.

“We wanted to implement a single in-

formation security infrastructure across all our properties. We wanted a solution that could help us centralize and streamline the management of endpoints and give us a consolidated view of our security posture. This is when Think Software Services proposed the implementation of McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator,” says Dharmarajan.

McAfee ePO software provides Rotana with flexible, automated management capabilities that enable the security team to identify, manage and respond to security issues. “Besides centralized security management, we were looking for a solution with multi-tenant based architecture that would help us drive down the cost and complexity of managing security. The McAfee solution ticked all the boxes,” says Dharmarajan.

After the implementation of McAfee ePO, which was done in a phased manner, Rotana’s security teams is now able to monitor the company’s security posture, improve threat detection and expand incident response capabilities. “The biggest benefit is that now we can roll out and enforce security policies across all our hotels, and run pre-scheduled scan without having to send our engineers to the locations to do it manually,” adds Dharmarajan.

This is done through McAfee agent handlers installed at property, which automates the workflows between security and IT operations systems, and handles the communications between central ePO server and endpoints.

Though Rotana has never faced any serious threats, Dharmarajan says being prepared is the key. “Many of the breaches can be avoided through regular device scanning combined with understanding of security policies and procedures. What you need is a complete picture of what is actually happening in your environment to mitigate risks.”

Biju Dharmarajan, Director of IT Security & Infrastructure at Rotana

We wanted a solution that could help us centralize and streamline the management of endpoints and give us a consolidated view of our security posture. This is when Think Software Services proposed the implementation of McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator.”

Having secured its endpoints, now the security team at Rotana is gearing up to go to the next level to completely protect its network devices and data.

“From day one, we have been serious about data protection and security is addressed at the high levels of our organization. Now, we are working on implementing a DLP solution along with identity and access management, which will give us more visibility into our security environment. Security is a work in progress at Rotana because we don’t rest on our laurels. The aim is to be PCI compliant in the next couple of years,” says Dharmarajan.

For hotels, balancing security with hospitality can be quite tricky. It is important to vigilantly follow all security protocols while maintaining friendly, responsive interactions with customers. Rotana is a perfect example of that fine balance.

Issue 02 A special supplement of Think Software Services

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Interview Ashish Nanda

Path to innovation

Ashish Nanda, Managing Director, Innovations Group, discusses the value proposition it offers to regional organizations and its successful partnership with Think Software Services (Think SS).

Ashish Nanda, Managing Director, Innovations Group

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an you please give us a brief background of Innovations Group?

I have been in the UAE for 25 years now. Prior to that, I was working in Citibank in India as a retail banker. I came here to the UAE in 1991 to work in Emirates Bank (now Emirates NBD) as a corporate banker.

Then in 1994, I decided to become an entrepreneur and started my own financial brokerage company called Image.

In 1998, we saw that there was a huge demand for outsourcing services, that’s when we decided to get into the outsourcing business and established Innovations.

When we started the company, our op-

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erations were mostly focused on providing our services to the banking industry.

We saw then that the banking sector was growing and players in this space were in need of more resources. Innovations aimed at addressing this demand, especially on the retail banking side, by providing them with the customer services and sales teams they required.

The business subsequently grew into providing outsourcing services to other industries including telecom, aviation, government, IT, oil and gas and so on.

Over a period of time, the company has grown remarkably, we have offices both here in Dubai and Abu Dhabi now with almost 7000 people on board.

Through your experiences, how do you think the outsourcing industry has evolved over the years?

I remember years ago when the concept of outsourcing was still very new in this country, we had to go from one company to another and painstakingly explain to them what it meant. After long periods of conversations, only then could we get a contract or a deal.

Now, when I meet with potential clients, if they’re not already doing it with Innovations or with other outsourcing companies, they are already thinking about employing an outsourcing partner.

Also, in 2008, the government hadintroduced a licencing requirement for outsourcing companies and I believe that this further recognises the growth of this industry. Today, everyone from the private sectors up to government bodies such as the RTA, Chamber of Commerce, the Ministries have, at one point to another, outsourcing needs.

How can businesses improve their bottom line through outsourcing some of their functions?

Most large enterprises are in need of extra resources and seek outsourcing services. In context, a bank is expected to provide its customers with a number products and services such as cards, loans, mortgages and so on. They will need numerous people in their workforce to provide all these services. However, a bank’s core function is not on recruiting or managing the people within their organization, now this is where their need for an outsourced workforce comes.

The primary aim of outsourcing companies like us is to help our clients focus their key resources on their core functions. They can count on us to manage their customer services, salesforce and other support functions. Now, since the workforce in these functions is provided by us, we also take care of the human resources requirements of people in these teams; matters such as payroll

and employee progression are handled by us. Also, we are able to get resources at a much reasonable price. Companies can rely on us on not only identifying the right talents but also on allocating their respective salaries. They can save both time and money in this respect and just focus on their core competence.

What differentiates Innovations Group from its competitors?

As an outsourcing company, we can provide companies, in public or private sector, with the different support services they may need. Aside from our attention to detail, where we ensure that we find the right people with the ample skillsets that our clients specifically require, we believe that our technologies are what differentiates us from our competitors.

Our operations are very much technology driven, all the recruitment processes are on record and streamlined into our systems. Both the customers and the candidate can track the whole process of the recruitment.

Which verticals are you focused on?

Innovations is capable of providing services to multiple industries. Nevertheless, our largest workforce is centred on the retail, banking and IT industries.We are mostly focused on providing salesforce in these sectors.

We can also provide people for specialised functions such as underwater divers for oil and gas companies. While these tasks are often required by companies in this sector, they don’t hire permanent staff to take on the role. So, they outsource these functions to us for a shorter contract.

In the IT industry, we are able to source consultants who specialise in both hardware and software. We are also very capable of bringing other specialists from all over the world if our clients require it.

How has Innovations and Think SS grown over the years?

When we started speaking to our clients

There has been a great harmony between Innovations and Think SS since then. Now, the growth of both companies has been fantastic and we have been growing by 40 percent year-onyear. about IT services a few years ago, they thought that we do not speak the ‘tech language.’ There was a lot of jargon in the IT industry then and true enough we didn’t understand everything there is in this segment.

We first thought that it will be just like any outsourcing requirement, where they would tell us what they need and we’d find it for them. So, we weren’t able to go far with our IT services offerings then. So, we started looking for companies who are focused on IT services and came across Think SS. Deepak Verma and I have known each other for a while. I saw that he

wanted to grow his company and we wanted to expand ours. We found that Innovations and Think SS are a perfect match, in a sense that we can expose his services to our clients who need IT specialities and he can recommend us to his clients who need other services. There has been a great harmony between Innovations and Think SS since then. Now, the growth of both companies has been fantastic and we have been growing by 40 percent year-on-year.

What are your future plans for growth?

With Innovations, we’re looking at diversifying our offerings even more. We want to offer more services rather than just providing human resources. So, for us, the focus area is the construction sector, where we see a huge growth as it is one of the largest industries here in this part of the world. As a company, we are aiming to provide more value-added services. We are also looking at expanding the business to countries such as Qatar and Kuwait.

As for Think SS, I believe the company is heading towards the right direction. They are significantly growing as an entity. The coming months will soon see the company move their focus from providing services for small and medium enterprises to large enterprise clients. I think they are progressing wonderfully with that endeavour.

Issue 02 A special supplement of Think Software Services

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overview Technical Expertise

Getting ahead

Thinks SS draws on its deep industry knowledge and technical expertise to help customers address complex technology and business challenges.

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Faheem Siddiqui, Head of Technical Services

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e it mobility, analytics of cloud, the next wave of technology arrives long before enterprises can find the right people who can help them deploy and manage these technologies. As the demand for new technologies continuously increase, so does the demand for the right skills and knowledge.

The going gets even tougher for enterprises looking to adopt some of the emerging technologies because it an eclectic mix of not just technology and tools, but also requires people skills, business acumen in addition to a firm understanding of the industry.

Many CIOs in the region agree with the fact that there are not enough skill sets in the market to address the technological needs, and most companies have started turning to solution providers such as Think SS to cater to their technological needs.

“Probably, the biggest differentiator for us in the market is the rich array of technical skills that we possess across our three divisions – security, infrastructure and cloud services, combined with our experience of over 10 years. Over these years, we have gained intellectual property and market penetration, which gives us unique insights into common problems that our customers face. So, when we solve an issue for one customer, we automatically take it to the next one and pre-emptively solve their issues before they arise,” says Faheem Siddiqui, Head of Technical Services.

He adds that by virtue of the depth of Think’s engagement with OEMs and vendors, the company is in a better position to delivery quality products at the best of prices.

“Our engagement with vendors such as Dell, Cisco, McAfee is second to none, and we get the best pricing from them. In addition, we have our Center of Excellence in India and engineers based out of the UAE. When it comes to high technology projects, our local engineers execute the job and routine tasks are performed by our personnel back in India. This saves costs, which we then pass it on to our customers.”

Think SS boasts of 15 highly skilled technical engineers based in the UAE with a ready bench of 25 engineers back in India. “We have clearly defined KPIs for our technical team members, whereby they have to constantly upgrade their knowledge of new technologies coming to the market, be it from our existing partners or the niche technologies we are bringing to the market. Some of the compliance and standards require us to look around for best of breed solutions to cater to our clients, especially in the public sector. And we have the highest level of technology engagement with our partners such as Dell, Cisco and Barracuda,” says Faheem.

Such engagements allow Think SS to take a consultative approach and architect complex solutions. “We are working on many DR projects, which requires us to architect solutions spanning storage, virtualization, networking and security. When we architect and integrate such complex solutions, we often go back to OEMs with the proposed solution and get their sign off so our customers have the peace of mind and assurance that these solutions will work in unison,” says Faheem.

Another factor that helps Think SS beat the competition in delivering new customer experiences is its project delivery methodology. “It involves three phases – planning and design, implementation and operational hand over. Many a time, customers have decided to hand over the operation back to us, and we are offering managed services to quite a few of our customers. Some of our customers, especially in the education sector, are moving to cloud services, and we offer the capability to manage these cloud services as well,” says Faheem.

Though pricing is still a differentiator, Faheem adds that Think SS never competes on cost to win deals.

“Given the economic situation, there is definitely a push towards cost-optimisation but at the same time there is also a dearth in skills, which requires us to pay extra to acquire. This may have an impact on the net worth of the solution we are offering, but I am happy to say that 80 percent of our clients are repeat customers because they have seen our technical expertise and intellectual property we bring on board. Those who will survive and stand in this market for the next couple of years would do so on the merit of their technical expertise, not sales positioning.”

Thinks SS is currently expanding its technical team to cater to the evolving market needs. “We are expanding our team around specific technologies, which are niche and fall into our go-to-market strategy – IT GRC, data loss prevention and, business intelligence and analytics. Mobility is another area where we are looking to expand our portfolio, and our COE is currently developing expertise in this area,” says Faheem.

Looking ahead, Faheem predicts that market will consolidate more and

more around data analytics. “Most of the companies have the infrastructure already in place in terms of servers, storage and data warehouses. Now, what they need is to gain intelligence out of it. The partners in the region may have the software layer that defines some of the aspects, but lack the consulting or marketing expertise that can tell the customer what particular

“Our engagement with vendors such as Dell, Cisco, McAfee is second to none, and we get the best pricing from them.

In addition, we have our Center of Excellence in India and engineers based out of the UAE. piece of information of data makes more sense. We are able to do that and glean information out of both unstructured and structured data for IT teams, who in turn, can add value to their businesses.”

For most enterprises today, a technology by itself means little; it the focus on value added support and consulting that appears to the be the draw.

And this is where Think SS scores over the competition and makes a difference for its customers.

Issue 02 A special supplement of Think Software Services

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Partner Dell Software

Dell Security announces Advanced Threat Protection Service

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ell Security has launched Dell SonicWALL Capture Advanced Threat Protection Service, which enhances organizations’ ability to safeguard against today’s shape-shifting cyber threats. Taking a first-to-market, adaptive, multi-engine sandboxing approach, Dell Security is incorporating the VMRay third-generation Analyzer threat detection analysis engine with the Lastline Breach Detection platform and the Dell SonicWALL Sonic Sandbox threat analysis engine, to deliver a threelayer level of defense that organizations need to safeguard against today’s unknown threats. This new cloud offering reinforces the commitment Dell Security has made to delivering comprehensive protection against the meteoric growth of zero-day attacks targeting businesses today, as identified in the Dell Security 2015 Threat Report.

With the new Dell SonicWALL Capture service, Dell Security is offering the most effective advanced persistent threat (APT) prevention solution in the market, and this service a significant proof point in our strategy to integrate bestof-breed partners into our Connected Security platform. It gives customers and partners access to the latest leading detection technologies, integrated with Dell SonicWALL next-generation firewalls to provide more comprehensive and proactive security solutions, says Curtis Hutcheson, general manager, Dell Security.

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Florian Malecki, International Product Marketing Director, Dell Security EMEA

Today, organizations of every size are targeted by a diverse range of cyber criminals who continually seek, find and exploit security holes in applications and infrastructure to gain access to the network, often perpetrating serious harm within minutes. According to the newly published 2016 Dell Security Annual Threat Report, the Dell SonicWALL Threat Research Team documented a 73 percent increase in unique malware samples collected over the previous year.

Most of these threats were targeted, evasive and zero-day attacks found across computing systems and devices.

With smarter threats and malware often designed to detect the presence of a virtual sandbox and evade discovery, or-

ganizations need an intelligent, advanced threat detection system that not only analyzes the behavior of suspicious files, but also uncovers hidden malware without being detected itself.

Industry analyst firm Gartner stated, “IT risk and security leaders must invest in technical, procedural and human capabilities to detect when a compromise occurs. They must provide the tools for first responders to react quickly and investigate the source and impact of breaches, compromises and incidents.”

Evasion-proof protection against zeroday and advanced persistent threats The triple combination of VMRay Analyzer and Lastline Breach Detection with Dell SonicWALL Sonic Sandbox sandboxing engines, which analyzes suspicious objects in parallel, delivers a virtually evasion-proof security solution that not only analyzes the file and reports malicious file behavior, but automates security by blocking malware at the gateway until a verdict is determined. SonicWALL Capture conducts not only virtual sandbox analysis, but also full system emulation and hypervisor-level analysis across all key OS environments, and file types for virtually any file size. Further infiltration of the identified malware/ threat is prevented with fast deployment of remediation signatures through the Dell SonicWALL GRID, Dell Security’s cloud forensics platform that leverages real-time analytics from more than one million connected next-generation firewalls (NGFWs) worldwide. The service scales to specific organizational needs by leveraging the cloud subscription service delivery model, which works in concert with all Dell SonicWALL NGFWs. “The Dell SonicWALL Capture ATP Service solution is currently in a comprehensive beta evaluation and will be available for purchase by mid-year 2016,” says Shahnawaz Sheikh, Distribution & Channel Director, Dell Software.

Next-Gen Firewalls.

Born for carriers.

Bred for your enterprise.

Introducing the Dell SonicWALL SuperMassive 9000 Series. with the new Dell™ SonicWALL™ SuperMassive™ 9000 Series, a Next-Generation Firewall that examines every packet without compromising network performance.

The SuperMassive platform was engineered to address the security and high performance demands of carriers and service the enterprise in an elegant one-rack unit (1U) appliance that saves space, power, and cooling costs. sonicwall.com/SuperMassive9000

Copyright 2013 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Dell SonicWALL is a trademark of Dell Inc. and all other Dell SonicWALL product and service names and slogans are trademarks of Dell Inc.

For More Information Contact Think SS: + +971 -44-288-300 | sales@thinkss.com